So really removing them probably made the game more newbie-friendly if anything, by making them realize the outdated guides are outdated. Also, Mi and HO are now more effective than MD, so if MD stayed in 0.10 then MiFi and HOFi would be better choices than MDFi anyway.

I like this game I like it a lot,
And you will like it as well.
You can swim and starve and fly and rot,
And even eat pizza in hell.

You can be a vampire,
And drink tonnes of blood,
You could be a sludge elf
And do things with mud.

If you want to have horns,

You could be a minotaur,

In the next room – a Hydra!

Quick, close the door!

You could be a mummy,
And never eat or tire,
You could master black magic!
You could also catch fire…

You could be a knight,
Brave and true,
Until you meet Sigmund,
On level two.

You can be quiet and stealthy,
A kobold Assassin or thief,
Until you backstab a golem
And it gives you grief.

You can be peaceful,
And never eat meat
Change your mind by the Lair,
And kill lots of sheep.

If you really want,

You can worship a slime,

But choose Cheibriados,

You can then control time!

You can worship Fedhas,
To grow plants and weeds,
Or worship Sif Muna,
For more books than you need.

Worship Trog to kill your enemies,
Until they’re all gone.
If you like to just have fun then die,
All glory to Xom

I like the new race (didn’t played it yet). Why not, I say, and let’s give it a try. It would be nice to have some insectoids thrown in there someday (ant people, bee people, etc…). It’s fantasy you know. I swear I would play a blob, a slime or a giant amoeba if I could. Relevant differences is what makes it interesting. Not more of the same.

For those who like dwarves & classic fantasy races, I understand your frustration but still think multiple flavors of the same race is not the solution. A dwarf theme branch of the dungeon, on the other hand, seems necessary to me. I still don’t really grasp why there is none. I mean the orcs & the elves have theirs, why not the Dwarves ? I am sure there is a way to be creative with them (…avoiding a repetition of the orcish mines being an issue). In any case, space should be made for them in the dungeon. It requires work but I believe it should be attempted. Furthermore, it could give the game a more classic feel that would perhaps counterbalance it’s more wacky elements.

My humble 2 cents anyway.

Good job guys.

Both bad things and redundant things are good to cut, and the former is much harder for devs to agree on. Mountain dwarves were the latter, just like giant toads and scrolls of paper and hill dwarves.

Honestly I feel there aren’t nearly enough removals compared to additions. There’s certainly still a lot of redundancy (screw bumblebees).

+1 for “keep dwarves”
+1 for “please no more octopodes”
+1 for “keep the hive”

Anyway, thanks again. Also there’s a wiki page now.

But i don’t seem to be able to butcher corpses while in spider form anymore :-(

If you want goofy, try drill-beaked penguins as a playable race, or something.

There is no wiki entry; the knowledge bot it turns “monstrous”. Looking at “monstrous” mutations, there’s no mention of tentacles. And no mention on said monstrous mutations affect unarmed combat, base or auxiliary, damage.

Thank you in advance.

Developers behind this movement, take a step back and realize that taking it much further in this sort of flavor’s direction will result in an extremely bland, totally deindividualized game with no immersive qualities. Most people don’t get into a game because the developers are in a nerd circlejerk, but because the game has variety in play and style and is immersive.

I can confirm it crashing on startup on OS X 10.7.3

sqlite3.c:15631: failed assertion `p->id==SQLITE_MUTEX_RECURSIVE || pthreadMutexNotheld(p)

It turned out I had a local installation of libsqlite3 that took precedence over the system one. Everything works fine after removing the local libsqlite3. This was, however, not a problem with earlier versions of crawl.

Incidentally, Hive removal was my favourite 0.10 change. That branch was the second most tedious one in the game after Abyss, and the latter actually has a reason to exist.

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto has more info (the key is linked about halfway through the page, will try and get it updated to be more obvious).

It is another in a series of patches that add unappealing gimmicky options and take away/nerf a lot of the traditional options that I enjoyed using.

A few years ago Crawl had a very traditional/serious fantasy feel in terms of the character building options (although there was were some comedy monsters admittedly).

But that has changed. There has been a steady process of eliminating traditional fantasy options and introducing “comedy” fantasy options. The comparison to SLASH’EM hits the nail on the head.

It really does seem like it was hijacked by people who dislike traditional vanilla fantasy.

It really seems like Crawl’s development has been hijacked by a group of people who hate traditional semi serious fantasy and enjoy ironic hipster Dungeons of Dredmor style fantasy.

Removing dwarves is just lazy. They’re one of the classic fantasy races and they’re incredibly popular. If they’re implemented in a boring way, isn’t the solution to find a way to make them more interesting, instead of just eliminating them and them adding a “hilarious” gimmick race instead?

It has really been one step forward, two steps back for a while now.

A bit of unasked-for advice: you need a harder shell against all those morons who attacked you regarding the MD removal. And if you feel that no one came to your side, then just deal with it. Same thing happens to all of us, one time or another.

Don’t come back to crawl for yourself, or the other devs. Come back beause you’ve been a major part in creating the best computer game there is. Come back for the players that are here now and for the thousands that will be coming in the future.

Figure out how a way, along with your coworkers, how to work together as a group and make the right decisions. But you’re part of crawl, whether you like it or not, and you’re still needed here.

Perhaps you can go to Linley for some advice. But find a way to get back to crawl.

Oh but hey guys we need to axe the MD because, you know, differentiation.

Quite possibly the steamiest load of bollocks I have ever heard. Don’t be surprised with your myopic focus on esoteric balance issues – and bias against the very ‘gauche’ fantasy materials which your game, whether you like it or not, is clearly deeply steeped in – a game with all manner of DnD creatures ripped from all kinds of pulp fantasy sources.

Cutting the Hive is another good example of how you are apparently disconnected from what makes the game fun.

Variety. What you are doing is pigeonholing every species into some developer approved playstyle. The amount of vanilla races is already very low, unless you count elves.

Do we care if you have a Hill Dwarf, Mountain Dwarf and and Forest Dwarf? Hell no, they can be different shades each with only +1 or -1 aptitude in any given area. But people like these choices, insignificant though they may seem. They provide color in what is essentially a strategy game of math with an exponentially increasing chance to win the longer you survive.

What you’re going to end up with is exactly what you seem to be begging for – a fork, a serious one, a la Super Lotsa Added Stuff.

Can’t wait to try out the Octopode race, and I’m also interested to see how the new skill system works out. Thanks Stone Soup dev team, for all your work you put into this wonderful game!~

Also, love the octopode race. I’m thinking they might make a great stealthy summoners, sneaking around and choking their victims unseen.

Great work you guys. Stone Soup is the best computer game I ever played.

PS: The snake pit is insane with constriction and reaching for all polearms.

If you thought it was too easy, the solution is to make it more diffucult, not to eliminate it.

Please bring back the Hive!

That said, can’t wait for CAO to update!

I have high hopes to have CDO updated by Monday evening.